Diana Wallis - Biography
In June 2009, Diana Wallis was re-elected to the European Parliament as one of six Members from the region of Yorkshire & the Humber. So far, Diana remains the only Liberal Democrat representing the region. She was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and has been an MEP ever since.
On 18 January 2007, Diana became the first Liberal Democrat Vice-President of the European Parliament, and was the first British female of any political persuasion to be elected to such a post in twenty years. After the European elections in June 2009, Diana Wallis was re-elected as Vice-President, after having been nominated as a candidate by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), her political group in the European Parliament.
Born in 1954 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, Diana qualified as a solicitor in 1983, specialising in European commercial litigation. Her law studies took her to Belgium and Switzerland, which added to her interest in European issues and heightened her desire to enter European politics. She is fluent in French and German and is keen to learn new European languages.
As Vice-President responsible for access to documents and transparency in the last mandate and in the new one, Diana is fighting for a more open EU. On 12th January 2009, through her work on the Parliament's Bureau, she obtained an agreement to publish official attendance records for Members; this gained the support of Parliament's plenary.
Based on her first-hand research of US Congress practices in 2007, Diana authored an opinion on lobbyists which was widely supported by her colleagues. She was subsequently nominated to sit on and assume a leading position in the Inter-Institutional High Level Working Group (an idea suggested in her own opinion) created to work on a common register and code of conduct for lobbyists. She thus became closely involved in the Commission's "Transparency Initiative". A number of interim achievements before the 2009 elections included the establishment of a joint web-site for a register (www.europa.eu/lobbyists/interest_representative_registers). Diana will continue work in this area in her new mandate.
As Vice President, Diana is again responsible for transparency and access to documents, as well as a wider role to oversee the activities of the EP's library services and documentation centre. Diana is also jointly responsible for the Question Time session held in plenary, where MEPs quiz Council and Commission representatives.
Diana continues as ALDE spokesperson on the Legal Affairs committee. She has been intrinsically involved in all aspects of the Committee's work and has authored a number of Committee reports including choice of law rules on non-contractual obligations (Rome II), maintenance obligations, European contract law, e-justice and greater access to justice for consumers/businesses in the area of civil claims.
Diana is also a full member of the Petitions Committee, where she has successfully pushed for citizen-friendly improvements to EU legislation such as citizens' summaries for all EU legislative acts which are currently being implemented by the European Commission. As Rapporteur to the Committee of Inquiry into the Equitable Life affair, she authored a high-profile report which found a broad consensus in the Parliament.
Diana has always had an interest in the Nordic region and in September 2004 was elected President of the EP Delegation to Iceland, Norway & Switzerland and the EEA Joint Parliamentary Committee, a post she held until September 2007. She remains an ordinary member of the Delegation, and meets regularly with her counterparts from the national parliaments of these countries. Diana is the author (along with Stewart Arnold and Ben Idris Jones) of the book "Forgotten Enlargement: Future EU Relations with Iceland, Switzerland and Norway".
Diana has been able to pursue her work in this area as Vice-President with joint responsibility for the Northern Dimension. She has represented the EP in meetings of the Nordic Council, the Baltic Sea Parliamentarians Conference and the Standing Committee of Arctic Parliamentarians, where parliamentarians from Canada, Europe, Russia and the USA discuss such sensitive subjects as the environment and regional security matters. She has visited the Arctic on several occasions over the past few years. Recently, she represented the EP at the Swedish Presidency's Ministerial conference on the Baltic Sea Strategy, held in Stockholm.
Having taken an interest in Balkan affairs for several years, Diana sits as a substitute member on the Delegation for relations with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo (DSEE). In 2009 Diana received the 'Srebrenica 1995' prize at a ceremony held at the Genocide memorial centre in Srebrenica-Potočari. The prize is awarded annually by the University of Sarajevo's Institute for the Research of Crimes against Humanity and International Law in collaboration with the Mothers of Srebrenica and the Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The official citation says the prize is awarded to Diana and her Liberal colleague from Slovenia, Jelko Kacin MEP, for "the unselfish support and assistance that they have provided to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the fight for truth and justice."
Diana Wallis has always had a particular interest in issues of direct democracy and in November 2002 Diana co-launched the Initiatives and Referendums Institute - Europe (IRI-Europe) report in the European Parliament. She is currently a Board Member of the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe - a think-tank researching all things relating to direct democracy. Diana Wallis is actively involved in the ongoing campaign to introduce a citizens' initiative at the European level, and hopes that citizens will have a more direct effect on European legislation.
Other activities:
- Diana is a substitute member of the Delegation for relations with the Palestinian Legislative Council. She visited the Palestinian territories in March 2008, and has established strong links with the Liberal mayor of Hebron, and the Palestinian Bar Association.
- Diana Wallis MEP is a patron and supporter of the National Endometriosis Society (www.endo.org.uk), which is the largest UK charity devoted exclusively to working with people affected by endometriosis. Diana, along with fellow MEPs, introduced a Written Declaration on Endometriosis to the European Parliament in 2005 to raise the profile of this disease. It narrowly failed to obtain the required number of MEPs' signatures before the cut-off date. Nevertheless, the European Commission subsequently agreed to include endometriosis in its future work programme. Diana ran the London Marathon in 2009 in order to raise money for the World Endometriosis Research Foundation (WERF).
- From 2002 to 2009, Diana was the President of the Institute of Translation & Interpreting, the only independent professional association of practising translators and interpreters in the United Kingdom.